(_Address of Lord Rosebery_)

I am here to-day to unveil the image of one of the great figures of our
country. It is right and fitting that it should stand here. A statue of
Mr. Gladstone is congenial in any part of Scotland. But in this Scottish
city, teeming with eager workers, endowed with a great University, a
center of industry, commerce, and thought, a statue of William Ewart
Gladstone is at home.

But you in Glasgow have more personal claims to a share in the
inheritance of Mr. Gladstone's fame. I, at any rate, can recall one
memory--the record of that marvelous day in December, 1879, nearly
twenty-three years ago, when the indomitable old man delivered his
rectorial address to the students at noon, a long political speech in
St. Andrew's Hall in the evening, and a substantial discourse on
receiving an address from the Corporation at ten o'clock at night. Some
of you may have been present at all these gatherings, some only at the
political meeting. If they were, they may remember the little incidents
of the meeting--the glasses which were hopelessly lost and then, of
course, found on the orator's person--the desperate candle brought in,
stuck in a water-bottle, to attempt sufficient light to read an extract.
And what a meeting it was--teeming, delirious, absorbed! Do you have
such meetings now? They seem to me pretty good; but the meetings of that
time stand out before all others in my mind.

This statue is erected, not out of the national subscription, but by the
contributions from men of all creeds in Glasgow and in the West. I must
then, in what I have to say, leave out altogether the political aspect
of Mr. Gladstone. In some cases such a rule would omit all that was
interesting in a man. There are characters, from which if you